We recently invited our active Twitter community to ask us anything that came into their minds about privacy, VPNs and all manner of related topics. The Twittersphere didn’t pull any punches, and among the great questions was one asking us to make our case for own existence: What are the reasons to pay for Freedome and not use some free privacy solution? Well, here’s a few we think you’ll be interested in.
1. Connection speed / bandwidth
Everyone wants security and privacy, but NOBODY wants it at the expense of a sluggish connection. Running a VPN takes a surprising amount of servers and bandwidth, and these resources have to come from somewhere. So if you don’t want your internet connection bottlenecked by a VPN server coughing out modem-speed traffic like an asthmatic robot, you might want to consider a paid option.
Next to connection speed, bandwidth size is the biggest prequisite people tend to have. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re based in Finland where the concept of data caps is very uncommon, but putting any sort of bandwidth limit even into the free trial version of Freedome was never truly considered. Unlimited bandwidth for all!
2. Our business model is giving you privacy, not taking it away
When any online service claims to be free to its users, there is often a catch. There are exceptions (like Troy Hunt’s awesome Haveibeenpwned to see if your passwords have leaked), but most will ultimately take payment…. in one form or another. This can come in the form of tracking you for advertising purposes, or even selling your bandwidth to hackers.
Be careful of free services and make sure you understand what you’re giving in return. For instance, our iOS developers created the free F-Secure AdBlocker, and we were quite open about the fact that we were using the app to raise awareness of Freedome. Sometimes the trade-off is worth it for the customer, sometimes it is not.
3. Publicly listed company
One of the threats facing consumers looking for a VPN are shady companies that operate in the privacy market. Freedome was conceived by a startup team within F-Secure, a company with a 25+ year spotless reputation among consumers. Without even considering ethical implications, making sure we keep the trust of our stakeholders is vital to our continued existence as a company.
When you use a service to encrypt your traffic and handle your data, there is no choice but to place trust in that service. We try to be as open about our ways of operating as possible, but ultimately, the choice of where you place your trust is yours and yours alone.
4. Based in a country where the law is on privacy’s side
If suspect business practices present one threat to consumers looking for privacy, so do the over intrusive governments in countries where VPN providers are based in. The U.K is working on the Investigatory Powers Bill (more often referred to as the “Snoopers Charter”), the U.S has an extremely spotty history in keeping their hands off people’s Internet traffic, and Russia is increasingly tightening their control over what people say online.
Thankfully, Finland is considered a pioneer when it comes to consumer-friendly online privacy laws. It is a great benefit both for us as a company and our customers that we have the law on our side when it comes to putting digital rights of consumers first.
5. It’s just a better and prettier app
Being part of an established online security company like F-Secure gives us access to a lot of resources. When you pool this together with the startup mentality of the Freedome team, you get a new kind of security app that packs features unavailable in other similar products. Freedome uses F-Secure’s own security cloud to access a constantly updated list of online tracking servers and malicious sites to block them from your protection.
And finally, what Anni already touched upon in her video answer: It’s light, intuitive and very easy on the eyes. Words like “VPN” and “encryption” might bring into mind a clunky & unfriendly interface, but we wanted to challenge that. Everything from setup to turning it on is done with a single button.
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